1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a receiver apparatus capable of receiving program information coming from a broadcasting station for a plurality of channels, for example, and outputting the received program information, and relates to an information recording/outputting apparatus equipped with the receiver apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
The multi-channel services have been recently available for broadcasting because of expanded range of services, e.g., terrestrial broadcasting using ground antennas, Broadcasting Satellite (BS) broadcasting using broadcasting satellites, Communication Satellite (CS) broadcasting using communication satellites, and community antenna television (CATV) broadcasting. As the multi-channel services become popular for broadcasting as such, recorder devices exemplified by a hard disk recorder is increased in capacity available for recording of program information. The number of channels is also increased, being capable of simultaneously recording plural pieces of program information coming at the same time from a broadcasting station.
As the broadcasting technologies are advanced and the recorder devices are improved, there has been a demand for a receiver apparatus equipped with a tuner, which is capable of receiving plural pieces of program information at the same time for a plurality of channels, and outputting the received program information all at once to display devices and recorder devices. Herein, the display devices are those exemplified by television receivers, projector devices, and others, and the recorder devices are those exemplified by hard disk recorders. The following related arts are related to a receiver apparatus aiming to meet such a demand, i.e., Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication JP-A 2000-513896, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication JP-A 6-69829 (1994), Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication JP-A 10-294930 (1998), and Japanese Utility Model No. 3100213.
JP-A 2000-513896 describes a receiver apparatus of a multi-tuner type, equipped with two tuners in a module. In the receiver apparatus, the oscillation frequency of these two tuners is not tuned to the radio frequency or harmonics of a signal received by either of the two tuners so that interference is prevented therebetween.
JP-A 6-69829 describes an IC receiver apparatus, including a tuner circuit whose high-frequency circuit section is of a two-chip configuration. The two-chip configuration includes an RF amplification IC and an AGC mixer IC using a GaAs field-effect transistor having excellent high frequency characteristics and third-order distortion characteristics. This leads to the small-sized tuner circuit having excellent third-order distortion characteristics with the fewer number of components.
JP-A 10-294930 describes a digital tuner in which two channels are alternately switched under the control of a CPU (Central Processing Unit) so that video/audio signals provided by an antenna for these channels are received at the same time. As to the two channels, one is a user-select channel, and the other is a channel adjacent to the user-select channel in the forward direction, i.e., in the channel switching direction.
In a television tuner unit described in Japanese Utility Model No. 3100213, a plurality of television tuners are disposed in line on a motherboard. In the respective television tuners, an incoming television signal is amplified by a first wide-range amplifier, and thus amplified television signal is split by a splitter into two directions.
With such a television tuner unit described in Japanese Utility Model No. 3100213, however, after the television signal input to the corresponding tuner is split by the splitter, the signal is attenuated in level in proportion to the number of splitting so that a so-called splitting loss is increased. The television tuner is thus required to equip a correction circuit including individual components, e.g., a balun transformer, an amplifier transistor, and a filter, for the aim of correcting the splitting loss. The concern here is that the component values of such individual components vary in absolute value, whereby the tuner shave to be increased in reception sensitivity. This arises another necessity for the respective tuners to equip high-frequency components that are high in performance capability but expensive. As a result, problematically, the manufacturing cost is increased.
Another problem with the television tuner unit described in Japanese Utility Model No. 3100213 is that the circuit occupies the larger space in the receiver apparatus including the television tuners. This is due to the configuration that the tuners are each shielded by a metal-made cabinet together with each corresponding correction circuit, and such tuners are disposed in line. As the circuit is increased in size as such in the receiver apparatus, the power consumption of the receiver apparatus is resultantly increased.
An information recording/outputting apparatus equipped with a receiver apparatus compatible with such multi-channel services has also been developed. Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication JP-A 9-9193 (1997) describes a multi-channel recording/reproducing apparatus equipped with a plurality of tuners and a large-capacity hard disk drive. In the multi-channel recording/reproducing apparatus, the tuners each receive broadcast programs for a plurality of channels, and video signals based on the received broadcast programs are encoded for recording to the hard disk drive. The encoded signals recorded on the hard disk drive are converted into original video signals by a decoder, and then provided to a television receiver so that programs represented by the encoded signals are reproduced by the television receiver.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication JP-A 2003-289490 describes a broadcast program recorder apparatus which allows a user to set a “store by” date for program information to be recorded. Such a date setting is allowed to make when the user programs the apparatus to record a broadcast program, or when the user actually records the broadcast program. Based on thus set “store by” date, the program information is accordingly deleted.
With the JP-A 9-9193, when the video signals are encoded for recording to the hard disk drive after the tuners receive a plurality of television broadcast programs, the video signals are subjected to compression prior to recording. This is aimed to record the video signals as many as possible. The problem with the first related art is that the recording of the video signals or others is allowed only up to the recording capacity of the hard disk drive. For more recording of the video signals, the hard disk drive may be possibly increased in capacity to a further degree. When this is the case, however, the larger the capacity of the hard disk drive, the likelier that the manufacturing cost is increased.
With the JP-A 2003-289490, the “store by” date set by the user is used as a basis to delete the program information so that the recording capacity is reserved on the recording medium. This aims to enable the effective use of the recording medium. The problem with the second related art is that, however, the user is required to make a program setting to record a broadcast program. When no program setting is made, or when the user starts watching a broadcast program not from the beginning, the user cannot view the entire program he or she did not program to record or the part of the program he or she failed to watch as did not start watching the program from the beginning. In this sense, there is a problem that the user's convenience for use is considered poor.